Corporate Spending in Our Elections

The selling of America continues inexorably. President Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted this phenomenon 50 years ago when he warned about the military-industrial complex.

With this decision, political action committees will become even more emboldened and powerful. Their contributions are overwhelmingly channeled to candidates and causes that protect and enrich the entrenched interests at the expense of the middle class and working Americans.

This decision demonstrates that elections do matter, and that conservative justices are as willing to overturn precedent as liberal ones, with the critical distinction regarding whose interests are being protected.

David Kuziemko
Sterling Heights, Mich., Jan. 22, 2010

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To the Editor:

With this one ruling, overturning a century’s worth of precedents, the Supreme Court has blindsided and marginalized the American voter.

Now, one check from a corporation “too big to fail” can render an event like the remarkable grass-roots funding of the Barack Obama campaign insignificant, even quaint.

Well-financed smear campaigns, which can derail quality candidates long before those campaigns can be exposed for what they are, will become common practice.

With no restrictions on spending, how can any politician who hasn’t captured the heart and soul of big business hope to survive? How long will it be before our legislatures are stocked with handpicked front men?

Is this the vision that the five justices in the majority have for our democracy?

Robert Wagner
New York, Jan. 22, 2010

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To the Editor:

By means of two legal fictions, that corporations are people and money is speech, the Roberts court has turned America from a democracy to a plutocracy.

Norman N. Holland
Gainesville, Fla., Jan. 22, 2010

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To the Editor:

In “The Court’s Blow to Democracy” (editorial, Jan. 22), you strenuously disagree with the proposition that “corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights.”

Photo

Credit
Oliver Munday

Every day, The New York Times Company exercises its First Amendment right to engage in political speech. Today, it expresses its desire to deny that right to most other corporations.

The Constitution does not permit the government to criminalize speech based on the identity of the speaker. If any corporation has First Amendment rights, all corporations must have First Amendment rights.

Adam J. Kwiatkowski
Baltimore, Jan.
22, 2010

The writer is a lawyer in private practice.

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To the Editor:

So much for the vaunted “conservative legal philosophy” espoused by the majority on the Supreme Court. This philosophy, affirmed by each of these justices at their confirmation hearings, supposedly prizes judicial restraint, respect for the letter of the Constitution and the intentions of its authors, respect for precedent and a rejection of so-called legislating from the bench. The court’s decision on corporate speech violates every one of these principles.

Rather than deciding a narrow case, the court explicitly asked for arguments on a broad constitutional question at best tangentially related to the case before it.

In a finding that overturns large swaths of established law and judicial precedent, the court shows that it is fully comfortable legislating from the bench, so long as such legislation supports a conservative political agenda.

Jonathan Maskit
Granville, Ohio, Jan.
22, 2010

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To the Editor:

The justices have affirmed a core principle of Republican government: one dollar, one vote.

Stephen Bowles
Santa Barbara, Calif., Jan. 22, 2010

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To the Editor:

The Supreme Court decision overturning the century-old ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns is proof that it is now time for term limits on Supreme Court justices. Not only are the justices always a generation behind the mood of the country, but they have also demonstrated a will to make decisions favoring one political party, and the damage they inflict can be broad and long-lasting.

Six years ought to be enough.

Richard Bird
Piscataway, N.J., Jan.
22, 2010

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To the Editor:

Why is everyone up in arms about the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations unfettered monetary access to the American election process? To me this is a golden opportunity, as now our elected officials can sell corporate naming rights to their seats.

The junior senator from North Carolina? He or she is now the Bank of America senator. The senior senator from Alaska could be the Exxon senator.

The politicians may never have to fund-raise again! Think of all the time that will save to actually legislate.

Randy Levinson
New York, Jan.
22, 2010

A version of this letter appears in print on January 23, 2010, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Corporate Spending in Our Elections. Today's Paper|Subscribe